HAN RIVER RAID

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26516, 3 September 1951, Page 7

HAN RIVER RAID

N.Z. Frigates In

Action (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, Sept. 2. Six British frigates and a South Korean frigate made a daring journey up the Han river to blast enemy positions, dumps, and supply trains. It was one of “the navigational feats of the war,” the Admiralty said. The operation became necessary to get at the enemy entrenched behind the Imjin line, and it was decided to let the frigates attempt the task of navigating the Han to find a new and and nearer bombardment anchorage. Men of the little ships of the Commonwealth leapt at the chance. Leading the expedition was the British ship, Cardigan Bay, and then came the Morcam Bay and the Mounts Bay, the New Zealand ships, the Hawea and the Rotoiti, and the Australian frigate Murchison. The ships took 40 hours to make the 30 miles up the river. They shelled Yonan, seven miles inland, where strong forces of the enemy were concentrated. The enemy was “spitting back” against the small British craft but always the guns of the frigates blasted him out of his foxholes and kept him on the run.

“The Times" says that the vessels taking part in the mission at times recorded only five feet of water on the sounding lines. Navigation officers were sent out in, motor cutters to investigate uncharted channels.

100,000 SHELLS

(Rec. 8 p m.) TOKYO. September 2. The 45th Field Artillery Regiment on Friday fired its one hundred thousandth round in the Korean war. The white-painted shell went shrieking to a carefully selected target—a group of Communist soldiers settling down to lunch 8000 yards away. Blast and shrapnel killed most of them.